10-12-08

Walt Monegan Dares Ms. Palin to Fire Him Over Ethic's Reform

The mainstream big media owned by the bad guys support Barack Obama and it would like you to believe Ms. Palin fired Walt Monegan because Mr. Monegan would not fire her ex brother in law, Mike Wooten. Wrong. Walt Monegan was in the Alaska government "in crowd" and was angry Ms. Palin is/was determined to clean up Alaska politics. From Wikipedia, "She (Sarah Palin) had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill." In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.[78] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to $1.6 billion.[79] In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.[80]

Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.

Walt Monegan, the guy Ms. Palin fired, was in the group who was angry she was cleaning up Alaska's politics and basically dared her to fire him in the hope it would lead to her impeachment. How do we know this? Mr. Monegan brought Ms. Palin an official portrait to sign of a state trooper in uniform, saluting in front of the police memorial in Anchorage. The model trooper? Ms. Palin's ex brother in law, Mike Wooten. The police department as well as Mr. Monegan showed their hatred and dislike of Ms. Palin's cleaning house by declaring Mike Wooten their hero. This is not just another small person sick joke. This is an out an out dare to be fired. Their model officer. Alaska's 2008 Police Memorial Day official portrait hero, Mike Wooten, is a four-time divorcee with a history of reprimands as a trooper, allegedly drinking on the job, allegedly killing a moose illegally, electrocuting his 11-year-old step son with a taser, and threatening to kill Ms. Palin's father. Is it any wonder Team Obama has fostered this no big deal nothing event like a bear seeks honey? Remember Obama is not even eligible to run for president. The biggest gaffe in the history of the USA.

Mike Wooten is symbolic of Walt Monegan, some members of the Alaska police, and a larger group Ms. Palin pushed to reform in the bipartisan ethics reform bill.

As was Ms. Palin's right under Alaska law, because Walt Monegan served at her leisure, logic dictates she fired Walt Monegan because he aligned himself with those the ethics reform bill meant to rid from Alaska's political scene. How do we know this? Monegan brought Ms. Palin the Mike Wooten as official state trooper portrait for her to sign. A picture is worth a thousand words.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1849399-2,00.html

From a Time article written by Nathan Thornberg

It was at that long table that Todd Palin first scheduled a meeting with Walt Monegan, days after his wife's administration began. He showed Monegan three huge binders of evidence against Wooten, including a picture of a dead moose that had been shot illegally. After Monegan came back saying that there was no new actionable information, Todd began a very visible campaign of stewing and fuming, trying to get access to personnel files, calling up and down the Public Safety org chart.

The report also raises the suggestion that the final incident that led to Monegan's firing was perhaps the most (unintentionally) hilarious part of the whole saga. In the run-up to Alaska's 2008 Police Memorial Day event, Monegan visited Palin in Anchorage and brought along an official portrait of a state trooper in uniform, saluting in front of the police memorial in Anchorage, for Palin to sign and present at the event. The trooper? Mike Wooten.

zzzzzzzzz

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1849399-2,00.html

Friday's report from special investigator Stephen Branchflower to Alaska's Legislative Council answered some basic questions about the political and personal bog known as Troopergate.

Was the refusal to fire Mike Wooten the reason Palin fired Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan? Not exclusively, and it was within her rights as the states' chief executive to fire him for just about any reason, even without cause.

Those answers were expected, given that most of the best pieces of evidence have been part of the public record for months. The result is not a mortal wound to Palin, nor does it put her at much risk of being forced to leave the ticket her presence succeeded in energizing.

But the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so.

The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage's Club Paris.

A harsh verdict? Consider the report's findings. Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.

The state's head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state's attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor's chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, "This conversation is discoverable ... You don't want Wooten to own your house, do you?"

Monegan consistently emerges as the adult in these conversations, while the Palin camp displays a childish impetuousness and sense of entitlement.

One telling exchange: Deputy Commissioner John Glass, who worked under Monegan, told Branchflower he was "livid" after a Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, went outside the chain of command and called a state trooper in far-off Ketchikan to complain about Wooten. Why had Bailey called the trooper? Because, Bailey said, this trooper had gone to church with Sarah Palin back in Wasilla, so he felt "comfortable" talking to him about Wooten. Glass, too, tried to sound the warning that continuing to pressure anyone and everyone in the matter would end in "an unbelievable amount of embarrassment for the Governor and everybody else".

(See photos of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail)
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Another amateurish sign: Todd Palin's outsize role in the mess. Branchflower said it was out of his jurisdiction to pass judgment on the First Gentleman, but his report paints an extralegal role for Todd Palin that would have made the Hillary Clinton of 1992 blush. In the report, the head of Gov. Palin's security detail says that Todd spent about half of his time in the governor's office — not at a desk (he didn't have one), but at a long conference table on one side of the office, with his own phone to make and receive calls. It became a shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired.

It was at that long table that Todd Palin first scheduled a meeting with Walt Monegan, days after his wife's administration began. He showed Monegan three huge binders of evidence against Wooten, including a picture of a dead moose that had been shot illegally. After Monegan came back saying that there was no new actionable information, Todd began a very visible campaign of stewing and fuming, trying to get access to personnel files, calling up and down the Public Safety org chart.

The report also raises the suggestion that the final incident that led to Monegan's firing was perhaps the most (unintentionally) hilarious part of the whole saga. In the run-up to Alaska's 2008 Police Memorial Day event, Monegan visited Palin in Anchorage and brought along an official portrait of a state trooper in uniform, saluting in front of the police memorial in Anchorage, for Palin to sign and present at the event. The trooper? Mike Wooten.

Palin signed the photo and didn't say anything, according to Monegan's testimony, but later cancelled her attendance at the event, sending Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell in her place. The head of her Anchorage office followed up with a call to Monegan berating him for his insensitivity. (Monegan swears he didn't know it was Wooten in the picture, and that he didn't even know what Wooten looked like.)

Shortly after that incident, Monegan's fate was cast. But even then, Palin's staffers were blithely adding more evidence to Troopergate. When Monegan's potential successor, Chuck Kopp, asked Bailey, the Palin staffer, why Monegan was being fired, he was told simply: "Todd is really upset with Monegan."

So what does this say about the possible Vice-President of the United States? Certainly not as much as her enemies would have hoped. She was only directly involved in a small bit of the pressure campaign — a meeting or two and a couple of emails. She can thank Monegan for not having her hands dirtier; it was he who told her to keep herself at "arm's length" from any Wooten conversations.

But even though she won't likely face any legal repercussions, the amateurism and cronyism of her brief administration hardly leaves Palin sitting pretty. Troopergate's final verdict may be even more damaging than a rebuke: her administration was, at least this regard, just as self-motivated as the Washington fat cats and lobbyists she hopes to unseat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development.[71] She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step" declaring that she remains determined to clean up Alaska politics.[72]

Palin tries out the Engagement Skills Trainer, July 24, 2007.Palin has sometimes broken with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Sean Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young.[73] Palin has publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as needed "to make clear she had not abandoned him politically."[64]

Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where such development has been the subject of a national debate.[74]

In 2006, Palin obtained a passport[75] and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases.[76] On her return trip to the U.S., she visited injured soldiers in Germany.[77]

Budget, spending and federal funds

Governor Palin in Germany, July 2007In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.[78] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to $1.6 billion.[79] In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.[80]

Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.[81] In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.[82] Palin lives in Juneau during the legislative session and lives in Wasilla and works out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is far from Juneau, while she works there she is legally entitled to a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she has taken (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she has not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla.[83] She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef.[84] In response to criticism for taking the per diem, and for $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business, the governor's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that Palin's gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski,[85] and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation."[83] Palin also has been accused of using state government funds and governmental powers to promote religious causes.[86]

Obama makes fun of workers losing their retirement savings, "You've got a 101(k) now"

This is not funny to me. A lady who runs a Wachovia Bank branch near where I live has worked for Wachovia for 38 years. Wachovia Bank stock has plunged from around $60 per share to around $5 per share. She has lost her 38 years of hard work with Wachovia. What angers me is the bad guys deliberately destroyed Wachovia and Hank Paulson through his Goldman, Sacks Chairman and CEO status plotted and played a role in Wachovia destruction and thus is partially responsible for Wachovia's employees losing their value of Wachovia in their 401 (k). Next time I see her I'll ask if she heard Obama's 101 (k) remark and see if she thinks it was funny. One of the reasons I am in politics is to right these wrongs. There is a great book, The Secrete, which says we become what we think. This is one of my thoughts. It would be great to play a role in Paulson and Obama getting the needle.

I saw Obama make the remark on TV, and his remark did not strike me as sympatric, and so I researched it for this writing.

http://www.macon.com/577/story/487671.html

Noting the Dow's drop Thursday below 9,000, Obama told a crowd at a park in Cincinnati that if they used to have a 401(k) retirement savings account, "You've got a 101(k) now," and ...

Advice for Sarah Palin

One of the things I learned when I moved from Houston to Wilmington is how much I knew about Texas and how little I knew about North Carolina. One of Ms. Palin's greatest assets is how much she knows about Alaska. Yes. Ms. Palin does have foreign policy experience with Russia and China too! Those native Alaskans who went on South and became Indians in Mexico came from China. If you put a Chinese and a Mexican indians side by side they are hard to tell a part. Learned this from a book written by my father's first cousin, John Crow, Mexico Today. Ms. Palin needs to do whatever it takes to become an expert on Russia, China, and Canada. Her first lessons should come from Alaska indigenous people. Noticed Ms. Palin brought her middle daughter to NYC. In my opinion this daughter should travel with her only if the daughter has a true love of politics. If the daughter has a love of politics, bring her. This goes without saying. Karl Rove types always, always go for the sex. Never ever forget this. The bad guys will do anything to win. One of the articles I read the headlines said Ms. McCain was doing a vice. I do not know whether or not this is true. But I do know the bad guys will do everything in their power to get one dependent upon their vices.

Advice for John McCain

Well, I heard John McCain is coming to Wilmington tomorrow. Heard the tickets are all gone but hopefully I can make it down to the Schwartz Center to show my support. What can John McCain do to save the economy? First of all McCain can realize the bad guys have done their best to eliminate competition and make the USA a communi$t economy. So McCain can start his economic recovery by allowing competition. Fair competition. Little George did some things to take competition out of the prescription business and this needs to be undone. Allowing Canada to sell drugs for cheaper prices and ship them to the USA may be a good idea. I take Benicar, Lotrel, and Vytorin and my pills are nearly $4 each and this is a rip off. McCain should channel words against the drug monopolies. Cheney formed a task force and took the competition out of the oil and gas business. This needs to be undone and if Exxon Mobil must be divided in little pieces to get competition then this needs to be done. Take a look at the mergers over the last 8 years and undo them. Dish TV, insurance, auto, the telephone industry, this industry, that industry have been marked by mergers and monopolies. McCain should promise to undo the mergers of the last 8 years which are keeping our prices high in major industries.

The Biggest Gaffe in the History of the United States - Obama Ineligible to Run for President

One of the attributes of the Little George Administration is/was their mode of operation of admitting something illegal as if this made their illegal action legal. This reminds me of Barack Obama. Obama has admitted from day one that his father was never a US citizen and his father was here on an education Visa from Kenya. What makes a US citizen a natural born US citizen? Both of ones parents must be US citizens in order for he/she to be a natural born citizen. Let's say Prince William of Wales,OM (William Arthur Philip Louis; born 21 June 1982) is the elder son of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, and is also the elder brother of Prince Harry (Wikipedia) came to the USA on an educational Visa and fell in love with cute honest Kanas girl and they had a son, Barry, born in Dallas, Texas. Would Barry be a natural born US citizen eligible to run for president? Nope. This example defines "natural born" as a child in which both parents must be US citizens and is the exact reason the framers of our Constitution required that in order for one to run for president this person must be a natural born US citizen, ie a citizen in which BOTH parents are US citizens. If William's son "Barry" in the example above was allowed to become US president then at the moment he became president the United States would have just become a Great Britain possession. In the hypothetical situation above if Prince William's son is inelligible to be US president, then in like manner in the real life situation which exists today, Barry, Barack Obama is ineligible to run for president. Barack Obama running for president is a sick action by the same bad guys who have given us the Holocaust, AIDS, 911, and now the economic meltdown, which has been timed to help elect their man Obama, Jacob Rothschild, the Rockefellers, and James Baker III, et al. Nothing good is going to come of Barack as president, and Obama wil probably get the needle for the scam.

Don't Kid Yourself - The bad guys have jumped from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. Karl Rove is helping Obama, not McCain, contrary to what the bad guy media tells you.

WASHINGTON — Karl Rove has inspired a generation of Republican imitators, Democratic vilifiers and, in this election, a term that has reached full-on political buzzword status: “Rovian.”
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Mr. Rove with Senator John McCain, a bitter Bush rival in the 2000 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination who went on to campaign for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004.

Enlarge This Image

Doug Mills/The New York Times
With Senator Barack Obama, in January 2005, when Mr. Obama and other newly elected members of Congress attended a reception in their honor in the East Room of the White House.
As in, this presidential campaign has been rife with “Rovian tactics” in recent days. This essentially means aggressive tactics — or dirty, in the view of Democrats, who use the term often, and not lovingly.

“John McCain has gone Karl Rovian,” Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. said at a recent campaign stop, a variation on a standard stump line from Senator Barack Obama’s running mate.

Karl Rove, of course, is the revered and reviled Republican maestro who has become ubiquitous in his new career as a commentator, columnist and conversation-starter. He left the Bush administration 13 months ago, yet continues to loom over a campaign that has become the backdrop for his post-White House reinvention.

On Fox News after Tuesday’s presidential debate, Mr. Rove said Gov. Sarah Palin had done a “very good job” of bringing up Mr. Obama’s past associations to the 1960s-era radical William Ayers, a guilt-by-association tactic that many Democrats decried, naturally, as “Rovian.” Last weekend, Mr. Rove said on his Web site, Rove.com, that Mr. Obama, based on a compilation of recent polling, would win 273 electoral votes — enough to defeat Senator John McCain if the election were held then. While polls had shown the momentum swinging to Mr. Obama, to hear the so-called architect of the Bush presidency saying so was deemed a watershed development among political insiders.

“His name seems as pervasive now as it ever was,” Dan Bartlett, the former senior counselor to President Bush, said of Mr. Rove.

Indeed he does — even though the patron with whom Mr. Rove will always be tied, Mr. Bush, owns some of the lowest presidential-approval ratings ever; even though the “Republican realignment” Mr. Rove once envisioned seems a far-off fantasy.

But Mr. Rove’s lingering impact, perceived power and even his bogyman status continue to place him in great demand, forming the basis of his lucrative post-White House career as a reported seven-figure author, six-figure television commentator and mid-five-figure speaker.

He was in Philadelphia on Monday for a “debate” with former Senator Max Cleland, the Georgia Democrat who lost an arm and two legs in Vietnam. Mr. Cleland lost his 2002 re-election bid after his Republican opponent, Saxby Chambliss, questioned his commitment to domestic security, running an advertisement featuring likenesses of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Many Democrats remain bitter over that defeat, for which Mr. Cleland still largely blames Mr. Rove.

“It’s a source of income for me,” Mr. Cleland said of the Monday joint appearance, sponsored by an insurance trade group, for which he said he was paid $15,000. (Mr. Rove’s speeches reportedly bring $40,000.)

Going up against Mr. Rove, Mr. Cleland said, “is like going up against the devil himself.”

It can pay to be the devil himself, or at least thought of that way. “There is an incredible amount of interest in what Karl Rove has to say,” said Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, who appears with Mr. Rove on Fox News.

Mr. Wolfson said he was amazed by how often Democrats asked him what Mr. Rove was like off the air. “When I say he’s nice, people look at me like I’m nuts,” he said.

Mr. Rove declined an interview for this article, but engaged somewhat by e-mail. He said little on the record, ignored some questions and was dismissive of others. “Look,” he wrote, “I don’t mean to be rude but I have so much on my plate that my brain explodes when you ask questions like how much of my time I spend on each of my activities or how did I apply skills to my new chapter, et cetera. I can answer simple questions of fact but I am stretched through the election.”

But it clearly delights him, for instance, that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts went on about “the smears of Karl Rove” during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. Mr. Rove helpfully pasted a passage from Mr. Kerry’s speech on Rove.com, under the headline “The Losers Have Spoken.”

Two top McCain campaign aides, Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, worked closely with Mr. Rove in the White House and are commonly referred to as “Rove protégés,” a designation that both dispute. Mr. McCain’s top advisers shudder at the perception that Mr. Rove is calling shots for their campaign — in part because his reputation is toxic among many swing voters, and perhaps the best-known victim of “Rovian” hardball tactics was Mr. McCain himself in the 2000 Republican primary campaign.

People close to Mr. Rove said he was determined to leave his mark on this race through public channels. He prepares diligently for his television appearances, and sprinkles his commentaries with the kind of wonkery that goes well beyond the repertoire of most talking heads. (“The Urban Institute and the Brookings Institutions did a study of the Obama tax plan,” Mr. Rove said on Fox’s “Hannity and Colmes” after the Tuesday debate. “The top 5 percent will pay $131 billion more in taxes.”)

Shortly after Mr. Rove left the Bush administration, the Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett negotiated contracts for Mr. Rove — as a paid speaker, as an author, as a Fox News commentator and as a columnist for Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.

Rove.com provides listings of Mr. Rove’s television appearances and columns, an outlet for Mr. Rove to respond to attacks against him in the news media and a place in which he links to articles about himself. “Karl tends to follow what is being said about him, somewhat obsessively I think,” said Scott McClellan, a former White House spokesman under Mr. Bush.

Likewise, Mr. Rove’s public words are closely scoured for hidden meaning. He recently said on Fox News that Mr. McCain’s campaign should be doing more to connect Mr. Obama to the former executives of the fallen lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The next day, Mr. McCain’s campaign released an advertisement doing just that.

“Is John McCain’s campaign taking political directives on how to handle the economic crisis from Karl Rove?” asked the columnist Sam Stein, writing for The Huffington Post.

Political strategists and analysts note the telltale “Rovian” influences on the McCain campaign, especially since Mr. Schmidt was given day-to-day authority in July. The campaign has taken a more aggressive tack against Mr. Obama and developed a sharper rapid-response apparatus, said Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican strategist. (“Very Rove,” Mr. Rollins said.)

Over the summer, the McCain campaign embarked on the classic Rovian strategy of taking an opponent’s perceived strength — in the case of Mr. Obama, his international popularity and ability to draw big crowds — and tried to turn it into a liability, likening Mr. Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

“Karl Rove might not be the architect anymore, but he certainly left a set of blueprints in the room,” said Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist and a friend of Mr. Rove, conveying a mixture of suspicion and admiration.